The politics of the election of Pope Leo XIV

This was clearly very well thought out--including the selection of an American--as the world is in a precarious place because of the dangerous leadership in the U.S.

With the arrival of Pope Leo XIV, much of the media has emphasized the mystery of the papal conclave, focusing on cryptic rituals, traditions shrouded in secrecy, and deep solemnity—which sells and keeps people riveted—when there are some things that are pretty clear as day regarding the politics of the selection of Chicago-born Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost. And even MAGA world sees that, and is in a full-blown meltdown over it.

The Catholic church is a global institution with huge cultural impact. As a nation state, The Vatican, with embassies and diplomats all over the world, and a presence at the U.N., has a head of state who has outsized power. The pope has a massive political platform. Certainly Francis sought to influence public policy, in the U.S. and in countries around the world.

And, as I noted last week, Francis was a smart politician—unlike his predecessor, Benedict, who was a lousy politician, a man led by the impulsiveness of his zealous conservatism, rarely making strategic decisions.

It’s clear that Francis knew—or certainly tried to ensure—that Prevost would be the next pope, desiring to have someone who would continue his direction for the church, away from the conservative American church’s ideologies and emphasis. Francis had named the vast majority of the cardinals who voted on his successor, and they were loyal to him—and likely loyal to his wishes if indeed he’d lobbied them prior to his death.

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Francis brought Prevost to the Vatican in 2023—making him a cardinal, and thus eligible to be pope, only two years ago—to further learn the intricacies of the Vatican (and, by default, the papacy), obviously grooming him for the job. Francis put Prevost in charge of the office in the church that vets bishop nominations from around the world, one of the most powerful offices in the Vatican, tasked with reshaping the church’s leadership.

It involved choosing new bishops upon retirements, but also sometimes removing church leaders and replacing them because they were trouble. Prevost worked alongside Francis in the two years before his death, a critical time. That was when Francis was seeking to reshape the American church’s hierarchy, as I wrote at the time, which for years has been deeply enmeshed in GOP—and MAGA—politics.

It was during that two-year period when there were big moves, such as Francis’ firing of Bishop Robert Strickland of Tyler, Texas—an icon of extremist MAGA Catholics—who defied Francis’ teachings. It was also during that time that Cardinal Raymond Burke was booted from his palatial Vatican apartment and sent packing. He was a Trump-supporting Covid denier who was making a fortune on the MAGA speaking circuit in the U.S.—and someone who also defied Francis’ reforms.

Prevost was there for all that and was deeply involved in helping carry out those decisions.

Before taking that job in Rome, however, Prevost, who was born in Chicago and educated in the U.S. and had spent his early years as a priest in the Midwest, was in the field as a missionary in Peru, where he also became a citizen of that country. He was Apostolic Administrator of Chiclayo, then named the Bishop of Chiclayo by Francis in 2015, where he served until Francis brought him to Rome in 2023 and made him a cardinal.

He got the experience as a missionary—a life experience that was vital to Francis’ outlook in reaching the people and getting beyond the church’s stone buildings—and then came to the Vatican to work with Francis in his last two years.

Francis may have had a few people in mind whom he was preparing over the years, but it was Prevost he clearly seemed focused on near the end of his life. The cardinals’ selection of Prevost, an American, sent shock waves through the world of church scholars and pundits, since no one expected an American to become pope because the U.S. has traditionally been seen as having too much power already.

But I believe having an American as pope at this point in time was part of Francis’ plan. Prevost was active in recent months on X. He hadn’t posted in all of 2024, but this year he slammed JD Vance, among other posts criticizing the Trump administration. I don’t think any of this was an accident, as these social media posts would become big news—which they are—upon the pope’s death and Provost’s becoming Pope Leo, sending a very clear message.

One opinion piece from The Catholic Standard that Provost re-posted just a few weeks ago was written by the auxiliary bishop of Washington, DC, Bishop Evelio Menjivar, who is from El Salvador and had been an undocumented immigrant himself for many years. It’s a powerful piece slamming the Trump administration:

The video of a student being accosted by masked agents after her visa was revoked without notice – apparently because of an op-ed she co-wrote years ago – is horrifying. Most egregiously, the government has now claimed the authority to unilaterally seize certain people based on mere suspicion, or because of their tattoos, and send them to a prison in El Salvador accused of human rights abuses – all without review by a court to even determine their identity. The government admits some have been wrongfully deported, but officials are fighting attempts to right these wrongs.

More than a few natural-born Americans are saying they do not recognize their country anymore, but many of us from other lands recognize all too well the terror of people being snatched by secret police and disappeared. We left our former countries precisely to get away from it.

It’s also noteworthy that Prevost chose Leo for his name, meant to signify his carrying on the work of Pope Leo XIII, who was known as the father of social justice. In his 1891 encyclical Rerum novarum, Pope Leo outlined the rights of workers to a fair wage, safety in the workplace, and the ability to form labor unions. Interestingly, the previous Pope Leo served from 1878 to 1903, during the entire presidency of Trump’s favorite president, William McKinley, the fanatic on tariffs who also emboldened big business to trample on workers.

Provost also criticized Trump often in his first term, on issues such as gun violence and immigration. I believe Francis understood the need for a pope who is from this culture, who speaks English fluently, who spars in his own voice on social media, and who could sit down with American television interviewers and lay out the case against harsh policies and attacks on the marginalized.

While the U.S. is just one country among many, and while the church is growing much more in Asia and Africa, Francis had to see—as many of us have—that right now Trump is an existential threat to everything in the world that is held sacred, including the Catholic church itself. The Vatican is smack dab in the middle of the European Union, under attack by Trump’s trade war and by the U.S.’s encouragement of Vladimir Putin’s encroachment on Europe. And the Vatican is surely impacted by any weakening of NATO.

But it’s, of course, beyond self-preservation. The causes that Francis promoted—supporting migrants, helping the poor and marginalized, saving the planet—are under assault.

We don’t know a lot about Leo’s recent beliefs and positions on women in the church, LBGTQ rights and other issues. Like Francis himself, he showed some hostility to gay rights many years ago—almost 15 years ago, in fact—but like Francis, he likely evolved, like many other leaders.

He recently remained open—though not fully committed—to Francis’s having allowed blessings of same-sex unions. And he has supported Francis’s commitment to “synodality”—diverse inclusiveness from grassroots lay people in the church—which the American conservatives in the church have fiercely opposed. My hunch is that Francis told him to keep his powder dry on the issue—as Francis did before he was pope—but we’ll know in time.

What is true is that there is no going back now to the archconservatives. Francis’s legacy lives on. And there is now a voice in the Vatican who is both a citizen of Peru and the U.S., someone whose maternal grandparents were Creole people of color from Louisiana. And he is someone with an enormous platform, who looks like he will be an outspoken home-grown counterpoint for all Americans—and the world—to the brutality of the Trump era.